


Of Palla and a Heart Bruised Purple

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Dark Femslash, Dubious Consent, Elder Scrolls: Palla retelling but F/F, F/F, Is there such a thing as mild necrophilia?, Necromancy, POV First Person, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24335038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: To have Palla back, for that alone, I would have sacrificed everything.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Writing Rainbow Make Up Round





	Of Palla and a Heart Bruised Purple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kartaylir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/gifts).



By the time I regained consciousness, the candles had been extinguished and the room was in darkness. When I exhaled my breath misted on the air. It was hardly the first time I’d fallen asleep at my desk with my work abandoned, but something felt different. Perhaps it was the density of the darkness around me, or the bone-deep cold, or the numb sensation creeping up my forearm from where my right fist was clenched so tightly around the amulet that its edges bit into the flesh of my palm, but unease scratched at the back of my neck like a long, sharp fingernail.

It was so cold I might have thought it the very midst of winter, until I remembered that it was in fact the tail end of Sun’s Height: by all rights I ought to be lying naked atop the covers of my bed, cursing the capricious Cyrodilic weather, and wishing the coming storm would break. Certainly not shivering in a room so cold my teeth chattered and I could see my breath.

I reached for my magicka, meaning to warm myself, but found my resources utterly depleted. There was scarcely enough to cast a starlight spell for the length of the time it would take to blink. I needed badly to rest – and had done for a very long time – but I doubt I could have slept even if I wanted to, not with my heart seeming to beat out of time with the rush of the blood in my veins. I felt odd. Not drunk, exactly, but... drugged? Out of sorts, certainly. Feverish, perhaps.

_Or perhaps this is what it truly feels like to be in love._

“Don’t be a fool,” I muttered under my breath, or tried to, through my chattering teeth. It took some effort, but I managed to ease up the grip of my hand and, as I rubbed my aching knuckles, the amulet fell against the desk with a quiet little clunk.

Failure. Again. I wished I had destroyed the damned thing after all. No good ever came of necromantic artifacts.

And yet...

Something _had_ changed. There could be no question of the source of the cold. The air around the amulet shimmered, refracted by freezing waves of power, and the rust-coloured runes gave off a glimmer of reddish light. It had left its imprint upon my hand, and I rubbed at my palm, frowning as the memories surfaced and I remembered–

 _Palla_.

Remembered standing beside Betaniqi at the moment the statue of her mother had been revealed. The warm air that caught the sheet, made it snap against the updraft like a pair of wings unfurling. And once I'd seen her, I couldn't look away.

Betaniqi's mother, locked in mortal combat with a monster. A murmur of consternation ran through the assembled throng as the sheet fluttered to the ground. “It’s Palla,” someone murmured in awe.

There is magic of a kind in the art of the sculptor, and whoever had sculpted this had skill: the tattered rags that obscured the terrible form of the creature seemed to shift in the flickering light cast by the lanterns, conjuring up the illusion that any moment the statue might come to life and the battle would recommence.

My mouth had gone dry and I swallowed hard, wishing for a drink to moisten my throat, but I was unable to look away from the statue, from the sheer power encapsulated in shining white marble. And from Palla, of course: I took pleasure in saying her name inwardly, forming it silently with my lips, as though by doing so I could claim her.

Gods, she was beautiful, and I found myself transfixed by her. Her expression was contorted with pain and rage as she wrestled with the creature that flowed around her like darkness, the cleverly wrought rags hinting at the deformities of the limbs underneath. Her head was thrown back, frozen in the moment of twisting away from the beast’s face, pressed too close to her throat. There was something unnervingly sexual about the way they were posed, with a clawed hand gripping her breast, and another hand grasping between her legs – and _hard._ The coils of her tunic bunched between its fingers, implying how deeply those fingers might be pressed, and I felt the sensation echoed between my own legs as a dark and heavy warmth coiled in the pit of my belly. Palla must have felt it too, I knew: an undercurrent of desire was reflected in every knotted sinew of her taut body, cleverly wrought in marble.

Betaniqi’s hand squeezed tight around mine in a questioning gesture. She had confessed to me in a quiet moment before the party that it made her nervous, this last statue, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. Seeing it now, I could understand why, and felt a stab of pity for her. Comparing Betaniqi to her mother was almost like comparing a lantern to the light of the sun. No one could live up to that.

I smiled weakly, and forced my gaze away from the statue – with my heart screaming in protest all the while – to offer her a reassuring smile. I’d thought Betaniqi lovely from the first moment I saw her, but it was rather like being struck by a thunderbolt: all I could see now were the deficiencies in comparison to her mother’s face. She was too young, too slight, a girl rather than a woman, and if she intended to become a warrior in future, that time seemed to me a very long way away.

I couldn’t keep my gaze off Palla for long.

To have a woman like that, I thought, dazed and light-headed from the brandy. To love her, to be loved by her. Even if just for a night. And as a breeze rose up from nowhere, I had felt an echo of a hand’s grip pressing urgently between my legs, and teeth against my exposed throat.

Now, at my desk, I shivered. The amulet felt warm despite the earlier cold, and I ran my lips over the rough surface of the runes, shivers running down my spine and bringing goosebumps prickling at my skin.

_Palla._

I could still feel her name on my lips. My throat ached with repeating it. Over and over, chanted, whispered, screamed out with my face pressed into my pillow to muffle my cries. I had fallen asleep with it on my tongue, and it lingered there still.

The stench that the other initiates had been complaining about billowed up about me, a reeking miasma of death and decay wafting through the room. I swallowed down bile, and stood, feeling my way through the darkness to the window. I unlatched it and threw it open, letting in the humidity of the night. Inside the room the air was still freezing, and the contrast of the chill at my back and the warmth of the night air made my skin itch and sweat prickle on my scalp. The open window did little to counter the stench.

I eyed the night sky. Dense clusters of charcoal-black storm-clouds shrouded the moons and the stars from sight, and _yet_ …

There was nothing natural about this darkness.

Behind me, in the chamber, something stirred. I held myself still for a moment, hands tightening on the window ledge, before glancing less than willingly over my shoulder. The shadows were as deep and impenetrable as the ocean, but the stench, thick with notes of mildew and rotting food, was stronger than ever. Something was here. From deep in the thickest pool of shadows came a sound like rustling silk, the whisper of movement. My eyes ached, refusing to adjust to the light, and while I should have been able to garner enough magicka to illuminate the chamber briefly, I found myself numbed, frozen like a mouse transfixed by a snake.

Another whisper of sound, and I forced myself to speak. “Hello?” My voice sounded far too small, too slight, as though the gathered shadows had swallowed it up.

A sudden burst of voices from the courtyard startled me, seeming unnaturally loud given the heavy weight of silence in my chamber. Two of my fellow initiates were returning from the gods knew where and had stopped to engage in conversation below. It had the air of a relatively friendly disagreement that had been going on for some time, and despite their attempts to keep quiet, one or the other kept raising their voice in excited disagreement before the other shushed them. I could hear their every word, more or less, but knew somehow that even if I were to call out to them they would be unable to hear me. I could feel it in the pressure at my ears, the muffling spell, courtesy of my old friend the school of Illusion. There was magic here, but not cast by me.

My heart beat a little faster. Again that rustling sound came from behind me, and another sound – the scuff of bare feet on wood, the creak of a loose floorboard.

Strange how much effort it took to will myself to say the name that I had spoken so many times before, so many I was certain it must be engraved upon my heart.

“Palla?”

From the darkness, a response. A breathy sigh, loaded with emotion I could not place. Surprise, I thought. Relief. At the edge of my vision I saw her, a woman’s form with the shadows clinging to her like mist or cobwebs, shrouding her from view.

“ _No,_ ” she said as I began to turn.

Trembling, I faced the window again, held still by the force of her will. And, I must confess, with the fear that this might be a vision conjured up by fever, and that to gaze upon her, as desperately as I wished it, would be to dispel the illusion.

Veiled by darkness, she approached, drawing up so close behind me I felt her breath against the nape of my neck.

I swallowed. _Hard_. She was real. This was real. I wasn’t dreaming.

“I want to see you,” I said. “You don’t understand, I’ve been waiting for so long.”

In response, she kissed my throat. Little more than the brush of dry lips on my skin, and a knot of frustration tightened in my throat. Not enough, not _enough_.

“Soon,” she whispered in my ear. “But not yet, my love.”

“My love,” I repeated numbly, furious at myself for the flush that scorched my cheeks. It was surely a kind of madness that had gripped me. The lips at my throat slid upwards to the tender skin beneath my ear, and the spark of pleasure kindled into a flame of urgent want.

“Am I not,” Palla murmured, her hoarse whispery voice deepening, growing richer with amusement, “your love?”

“Yes,” I whispered, and her lips parted, and I felt her silent laughter against my skin. I wasn’t cold any more, did not, in truth, understand how I could _ever_ have been cold when I held Palla’s name in my heart. And her voice had been so full with promise: I was growing wet between my legs, could feel an echo of sensation like warm breath on my inner thighs. “More than anything. Only one who loved you could have brought you back.”

“Truer than you know.”

“I want to see you,” I said more firmly, and then at the weight of the pause that followed, I hurried to add, “I don’t care how you look. It... isn’t just because of how beautiful you were.”

“You think I was beautiful?”

“Gods yes,” I managed. “And you will be again.”

Images of corpses, both fresh and ancient, wheeled through my mind, unwanted, unbidden. I fought them at first, But I knew I would have to face them. I could not lie to myself about what Palla was. So instead I embraced those images of the ancient dead, some with the lividity of blood pooling on their undersides, others long-mummified, with flesh withered and desiccated, bringing to mind the musty air of long-sealed Ayleid tombs. Oddly, it helped settle my nerves, and it struck me too that the stink of decay had faded a little. It was bearable now. More than bearable. Perhaps the longer she remained, the more she freed herself from the clinging embrace of death.

“It’s you I love,” I said, when I had recovered my composure. “Not your face.”

“Perhaps just as well.”

Slowly, I raised my hand, reaching up in the hopes of caressing the face at her shoulder. _I don’t care,_ I told myself fiercely, _I don’t_ care _. To have Palla back,_ _for_ _that alone_ _I would sacrifice everything–_

A hand caught my wrist. A soft cluck of her tongue. I pushed away my stab of regret, and then a second lesser stab of revulsion at how she seemed to be wearing a glove of thin leather. Instead, I twined my fingers through hers, then, and with my heart fluttering against the inside of my ribs, drew it downwards between my breasts. I thought of Palla, caught in the form of marble, of the hand pressing cruelly between her thighs, and all the while I waited for her to tear her hand free of mine.

She didn’t.

Instead, she touched me. Even without me needing to beg – and I _would_ have begged: I would have gone on my godsdamned knees if necessary, I wanted her so desperately – her fingers curved between my legs, biting deep through my woollen robes and the shift beneath. All her focus shrank to where Palla was clutching me, with her mouth still at my throat, and her warrior’s body solid as a bulwark at my back. Whatever she had become, she was still powerful, and an image of our bodies entwined, hers dark and muscular, mine soft and pale, rose in my mind. Two halves of a coin.

She brought a hand to my breast, squeezing it through the robes, and seeking out the nipple. She caught it between her first two fingers, pinching it hard enough to make my cry out in mingled pain and pleasure. I was so wet I’d soaked through my shift, could feel it wet against my inner thighs.

“I can smell you, my love,” Palla murmured at my ear, her low throaty voice almost a growl. And then she was raking at my robes, drawing them up with unseemly haste, so fast her nails raked at my thighs, leaving stinging welts on my exposed skin. I flinched for a moment, and then I didn’t care because I could feel the cool air on my wetness and there was a dead woman’s fingers on my cunt. And, _gods_ , but she knew what she was doing, spreading my lips so that the cool air could kiss my clit, but not yet touching it directly, not yet.

Just as well, since I suspect I would have come purely from that contact alone. And I didn’t want to come, not yet. Not when her fingers were paddling in delicate little taps around my clit, before delving briefly inside me only half an inch or so. I could hear how wet I was, the slick sounds of my cunt sucking at her fingers.

I’d spread my legs so wide my thighs and muscles ached from the unaccustomed position, and still it wasn’t enough. She was strong enough to support me as I leaned back against her, opening my legs still further as I reeled with pleasure, setting one foot against the wall.

It seemed, in the midst of my pleasure, that I felt something snake between my legs, but then her fingers had returned to my aching clit, and so I dismissed it, too drunk on pleasure to think too hard. Her other hand continued to caress my breast, the fabric of my shift rasping against my nipple, and the building pleasure was growing so intense I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to bear it. My legs would buckle with the force of it, I was certain of that, but Palla was unnaturally strong, bracing me, and so I placed all my trust in her and gave myself over to the feeling of being vulnerable, allowing Palla to do with me as she would.

And she did. I wondered at her experience, how she seemed to know my sex more intimately than I knew it myself, seeking out the secret pleasure spots and drawing from me sensations so exquisite I’d never felt their like before. She brought me to the very edge, then drew back, prolonging the agony, until I felt as if I was floating on an ocean of arousal, lost to pleasure. She slid her fingers inside me, three of them, first just the tips, and then deeper, curling them inwards so that they pressed against the inner walls of my cunt in a way that made me moan out in pleasure and grind back against her, all but sobbing, begging to Palla, to the gods, to anything that might be listening, to let me come.

I was there. Right on the edge. Loose-boned with arousal, foot scrabbling against the wall, clawing at her face, our position an obscene depiction of Palla’s statue, I was about to come, drawing a breath to scream out my pleasure into the sound-muffled room–

Her fingers jerked free, leaving my sex empty and clenching. “Please,” I begged. “Oh gods, _please_.”

And then her fingers were back at my clit, that same tormenting indirect contact, but the tapping sensation harder and less gentle, and I was back at the edge, jerking my hips upwards towards her hand. I felt it again, then, that sensation of something snaking around my thigh and brushing against my cunt. A slow languorous movement, snaky and sinuous, but by then I was beyond sense, beyond reason, as my pleasure erupted in wave after wave of pleasure, my sex clenching hard, aching I howled in anguished pleasure – _not enough, not enough, more, oh gods more_ – heedless of the open window, of who might hear. I’d forgotten the muffling spell, but wouldn’t have cared, even as I recovered, if anyone had heard. The orgasm was so intense it took a long time to recede, echoes shivering through my like aftershocks. And all through it, Palla was there at my back, supporting me.

“Let me taste you,” I begged.

A heartbeat’s silence. Another. Then: “Close your eyes.”

I obeyed. How could I have done anything else?

“Lie down upon the bed, my love,” she told me, and again I obeyed, feeling my way to the bed. As my knees bumped against it, I heard the sound of ripping silk and her murmured entreaty to be still as a strip of mouldering silk was wrapped about my eyes and pulled tight, obscuring my vision but not quite blinding me.

The darkness eased a little. A glimmer of light played over the chamber, catching on the glint of an eye, Palla’s form. Not enough. The silk obscured my vision, without quite blinding me. As I lay back onto the bed, her shadow rose over me with a faint diffused light at the window playing at her back. Glorious, like an eclipse of the sun.

My hands were already rising on instinct, reaching for her breasts, but at a hiss of denial so savage I dropped them, throat tight with regret and fear. It distressed me, Palla’s reluctance, what I presumed must be her shame at what had become of her beauty, that once-perfect body, but at the same time I was still limp-boned from the orgasm and hungry for more, and if it took ceding my will before she would allow me to pleasure her, then so be it.

The long nights of study and the headache that had been pressing behind my eyes for a long time were all but forgotten. There was just this, Palla crouching above me, her legs pinning my arms to my sides. Her dry cold hand stroked against my forehead, brushing back my hair. Old leather, cracked and worn. Fingers little more than tendons clinging to the bones, tipped with nails that scraped against my skin as they trailed down my cheek. She traced my lips and at her touch I parted my mouth and sucked the leathery fingers inside.

 _See_ , I thought, urgently, _See how little I care_?

She worked her fingers inside my mouth as she’d worked them inside me, a gentle flexing movement, pressing against my tongue. And then she was moving again, with a whisper of silk and a creak of bones, bringing herself forwards, her cunt to my mouth. The dry skin of her thighs brushed against my cheeks, the ropy muscles bunched hard as she poised herself above me, two inches or so from my mouth. Far enough that I had to strain to reach her. Another sign of her reluctance, or so I thought.

At first she seemed dry, which I hoped was due to her condition than any lack of arousal. Certainly there seemed something in the way she rocked her hips towards me that suggested she was aroused as I was, and I had known from the start that there would be... complications. If she was dry, well then, I had more enough fluids to spare, I reasoned, rubbing my thighs together and hearing the evidence. Had she given me my head I would have rolled out from underneath and straddled her, pressing myself against her and grinding so as to make her slick with my own fluids, but in a pinch saliva would have to do. And so, ignoring the ache in the back of my neck I explored the length of her hairless sex with my tongue, until I reached her entrance, and with a probing caress, it released what seemed like a flood of wetness. No more, in truth, than normal: it only seemed so because she’d been so dry, like an oasis spring in the Alik’r desert. Her fluids were honey-sweet and heady, and carried the taint of the decaying reek that I had come to so associate with Palla that I looked back on the days when I used to think it repulsive with disbelief. Now the taste of it rekindled my own desire. I drank it down, gloried at the iron-tang in the back of my throat, then gathered it up on my tongue, sweeping it up to the nub of her clitoris with a twinge of shame at how my clumsy caresses compared to Palla’s clever fingers. It made me want to grab Palla’s hips and take back some semblance of control.

 _I’m sorry,_ I wanted to say. _I’m_ good _at this. If you’ll let me…_

Palla gave a throaty cry, and I moaned in echoing want, my excuses forgotten. As Palla rocked above me, I felt it again, that sensation, something snaking around my thigh and tightening, drawing my legs open wider. Palla dropped down, pressing her cunt harder against my face. I no longer had to strain upwards, but she was careless as she ground herself against me, making a mockery of my attempts to please her with clever tricks of my tongue, and heedless of my need to breathe. A good job really, that I’d grown up in the Imperial City: I’d learned to swim at a young age, so as to not have to pay the wherries to cross the Rumare, and I was practised at holding my breath. And besides, even despite the moments when I couldn’t quite breathe and the way her pulling at my hair burned at my scalp, the taste of her was worth it, sweeter than wine and a thousand times more intoxicating.

She reached her peak with a shuddering groan and a series of spasms. I heard her rasping breath, the rattle of phlegm in her chest, and closed my eyes, drawing air in through my nose and with it her scent. I’ll fix you, I swore inwardly, on the honour of my parents, the vows I’d taken as an initiate, on all the gods I didn’t much bother with these days. Whatever it takes, I will make you whole again.

As if she’d heard me, Palla eased off, freeing my arms. She leaned over me. In the darkness her face hovered over mine, her fingers tightening in my hair. She was so close she must have been able to smell herself on my mouth, and my lips parted, the tip of my tongue caught between my teeth, as I willed her to kiss me.

 _More,_ I thought. _More._

And still she didn’t touch me, despite my splayed legs, how every part of me was begging for her to do so. So instead I reached down between my legs, my fingers finding my clit. I meant only to brush against it, to show her how badly I wanted it, wanted her, but instead my need proved too strong. A few strokes, and the orgasm rose like a storm tide, unstoppable and implacable. I bit back a curse and stabbed my fingers inside myself, no longer bothering with technique but focusing on nothing but the urgent knot of need in my belly. With a twist of my wrist, I let the knuckle of her thumb scrape roughly against my clit as I fucked myself with my own fingers, bringing up my knees and searching blindly for Palla in the gloom in the hopes that she would–

Nothing there.

The orgasm that swept through me was so hard it was almost painful, and yet it still wasn’t enough. From the darkness her laughter rang out, oddly distant. Laughter…

From outside.

I went still, my blood running ice. At another burst of laughter my cheeks burned, my hands gripping the sheets in embarrassment, although I couldn’t be certain it was me they were laughing at. Almost certainly it wasn’t, but in that moment my failure seemed more than I could bear.

A dream, I thought. All it was, a dream borne out of my yearning for a woman I could never have. The lingering taste on my lips was no longer the sweetness of my lover’s arousal but too-cheap wine, soured by a taint from the cork. The reek of decay… well, perhaps that was simply a rat in the wall after all.

Crushing despair and humiliation came crashing down upon me and I rolled into a ball in my bed, squeezing my eyes shut as if that could somehow stop the tears of frustration and humiliation from coming. It was all the worse for the arousal that still lingered in my groin, the slickness at my inner thighs. I was still aching for Palla, and for a memory of pleasure which was far more intense and satisfying in dreams than it could ever have been in real life.

“I am a fool,” I whispered fiercely under my breath, and the silence that followed my words seemed to entirely agree.

* * *

Days passed and the humiliation faded, though it continued to sting. I grew used to murmuring as I passed, and eyes turning my way. No doubt some of my fellow initiates were purely concerned for me– and when I saw my reflection I could understand why – but it was all but impossible to tell them apart from the ones who were laughing at me behind my back (at the time it did not occur to me that none of them were laughing at me behind my back; that every one of the glances my way were the result of concern, and occasionally fear).

I stopped my visits to Betaniqi, and burned my sketches of the statues without looking at them. I meant to burn the amulet too, but found myself hesitating, unable to quite make my hands do what I wanted. In the end I slipped it back into my scrip, regret a painful knot in my throat.

Still, I couldn’t get the memory of the statue out of my head. I found myself sketching it in the corners of my parchment, Palla a barely glimpsed figure within the coils of the shadowed creature that embraced her. Oddly, when I drew her in any detail, it seemed not to be her face that I drew, but my own, thrown back in ecstasy at the terrible clasp of the monster. I’d stare at it, shivering, then throw that too onto the closest fire as if that could be an end to the matter. As if it were the drawings that were at fault and not the images inside my own head. I wasn’t much of a healer, but I’d learned enough to know the importance of treating the cause rather than the symptoms.

And I knew also that I couldn’t go on like this. How long could I allow myself to stay obsessed with a woman I simply wasn’t strong enough to bring back?

So I steeled myself and returned to Betaniqi. Her relief and joy at the sight of me pierced my heart with a sharp stab of guilt and regret, and it made it all the harder to tell her that I wouldn’t be able to visit anymore. Sorrow flared in her eyes and she clasped my hands, clearly searching fo the words to tell me that it would be all right. That we would and could make it work, and if what troubled me was the reaction of my parents, then she was quite certain they would come around. She was, she added, with a sweet and slightly sly smile, quite wealthy, and my parents were Imperials, after all. I might have laughed at that, if we hadn’t been sitting in the parlour, with its grand doors that opened out onto the grounds. If I turned my head a little I could have seen the reflecting pool and the statues arranged around it. I could have seen Palla waiting for me.

It took some concentration to focus my attention on Betaniqi, sitting too close. I wished it could have been enough. She was lovely in her own way. Beautiful, really. And clever too. Godsdamnit, she was right about my parents, and insightful enough to recognise the regret I tried to hide. She deserved the truth.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Tell me. There might be something I can do–”

I gave a choked up laugh, smiling at the madness of it, at how ludicrous it sounded. “I’m in love with your mother.”

“I… I’m sorry?”

I’d begun with an air of sardonic amusement, trying to soften the blow and make myself look like less of a madwoman, but once I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop, despite Betaniqi’s expression shading from puzzlement to fury as I spoke.

“I’m in love with your mother,” I said. “I have been since the first moment I saw the statue. I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind.” I grasped her hand more tightly, as if by doing so I could make her understand. She squirmed, trying to pull free. “I have been trying to bring her back from the dead.”

Betaniqi flinched as if I’d slapped her. “ _What_?”

And still I couldn’t stop. “But I can’t. I thought perhaps… But no. I’m not strong enough. I’m not powerful enough. I just… I wanted you to know that I’m sorry. I don’t think I can come here any more.”

Betaniqi rose to her feet, wrenching her grip free of mine. Her face was suffused with fury. “You need to leave. _Now_. Before I have the guards called.”

“Yes… I will, I will.” I stood up, swallowing hard. “And I know you’re angry. I understand–”

A bark of disbelief. “You ‘ _understand’?_ How… how _dare_ you? Godsdamned mages! To think that I–”

“Betaniqi, I–”

“No.” She took a swift step away, her palm outstretched in a stay-where-you-are gesture. “I don’t want to hear anything more from you.”

“I realise you’re angry. And I’ll leave. I will. I just… I couldn’t help it. And surely you understand. The kind of woman your mother is. How could anyone fail to love Palla?”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Palla.” And suddenly her rage and disgust didn’t matter: all that mattered was that name on my lips, the rightness of it, her perfectly it fitted there. At the window the wind stirred the gauzy curtains. Betaniqi was staring at her, her anger dissipating, to be replaced by a hard-eyed wariness, while a memory of laughter coiled through me like smoke.

“My mother’s name,” said Betaniqi, slow and cold, “was Xarlys.”

“But–”

“Palla was the monster.”

I stared at her for a long frozen moment. Then, before she could say a word, I turned and spun, making for the doors that opened onto the grounds, and gathered up my robes, my shoes slapping on the stone as I hurried down the steps to the reflecting pool. The statue was waiting, Palla– No, Betaniqi’s mother: I’m afraid to say I’d already forgotten her real name – entangled with the sorcerous monstrosity, that repulsive product of a mage’s laboratory. I brought to mind the first moment I’d heard the name Palla spoken, as I gazed upon the lovely face of the Redguard woman, while another face, leered out from the shadows, concealed behind folds of cleverly wrought rags that contrived to give the impression of something hideous, malformed, and malignant.

They had been talking about the monster.

Faint, I turned towards the reflecting pool where my own reflection stared back at me, my face blanched and waxy-pale. I could still feel her name on my lips, the amulet clenched hard in my fist, as I channelled my power through it, amplified by the skill in Enchantment which I’d worked for so hard and for so long to perfect, calling across the Dreamsleeve to the gods knew where, calling it forth: _Palla, Palla._ Palla _._

Oh gods, I felt sick. My stomach roiled as the stink of decay, returned, filling my mouth. In the reflection something rose up behind me and drew closer. A breeze stirred the water, breaking up its reflection so that I caught only glimpses of shrivelled skin and black rags, withered limbs and lips shrinking back to reveal splintered yellow teeth, long as a hare’s in blackened gums. I shuddered, wished I could close my eyes to blot out even what little I could see of it, but I could not will my body to obey me.

“Palla,” I whispered, and, “My love,” it whispered in response. “You called and I came.”

“No...” I shook my head in denial, both of its words and of the long claw-tipped fingers hovering just above my throat. It leaned in, a black tongue following the curve of my neck.

“Only one who loved me could have brought me back.”

I thought of the statue, of Betaniqi’s mother, fighting for her life with the monstrous beast writhing about her. The fight itself must have been glorious, savage and brutal. _Power,_ I thought, and my mouth went dry.

“You hesitate, my love,” Palla continued, her voice rich and mocking. “So faithless. Am I not beautiful enough for you?” And as I shook my head, denying her, she added, softly, “I could be.”

I went still. The breeze cooled my skin and stirred the water, scattering the reflection in a myriad of choppy little waves. Slowly, I turned my head and stared up at the house, where Betaniqi was standing in the doorway, watching me as if she couldn’t see the creature behind me.

Such a slight little figure, not much like her mother, in truth. But beautiful all the same. And wealthy.

“All you have to do,” Palla whispered, as my lips silently shaped her name, “is say _yes_.”


End file.
